Search

Personnel only

Finding Richard Wiegand

On this website, I have described the story about Richard Wiegand: the 75th Infantry division soldier who stopped the German advance in Trou de Loup.
After publishing the story, I was wondering who this man was. We knew the story, but we didn’t know how he looked like.

Richard F. Wiegand

At that time had contact with Jay Puckett and had visited his website lots of times.
I decided that it might be a good idea to read all the entries of the guestbook of the 75th infantry website.
After a long time I found the adress of Richard Wiegand, a nephew of the soldier, who stopped the German tankcolumn.
It was an old entry, but I gave it a shot and with succes.

The family Wiegand knew what happend to their brother and uncle. It always stayed a sore place in their hearts: their brohter and unlce was killed during a German attack, somewhere in the woods, just outside a strange hamlet, called Grandmenil.
Richard and Vicky Wiegand sent me a picture of Richard Wiegand.
All of a sudden, this unknown soldier had a face: this was the man who gave his life to stop the German advance. Who knows what would have happened, if the Germans had broken through that thin American defensive line…. They would have reached Briscol, where the 75th infantry division and 3rd armored division assembled….

A little while after I made contact with the Wiegand family, I found out that there were plans to erect a monument in Trou de Loup for Wiegand.
The initiative came from Dimitri Detroz and the community Manhay approved the initiative.
I contacted the family again and told them of the plans. For them it was impossible to come to Europe and attend the ceremony. So, I decided to film the whole ceremony and sent it over to the US.
And so I did.

On december 12th 2009, there was a ceremony in Trou de Loup. The US anthem was played, there was a moment of silence and a large group of people witnessed the inauguration of the monument for Richard F. Wiegand.
Since then there is a large stone on an old road in the middle of the woods, where once was a fierce fight……

And that’s it? No. The Wiegand story attracks a lot of people. And not only tourists. Once a while I recieve an email with questions or comments from family of US soldiers. It gave much more information. And, there was the astonishing story of Jan Griffin and veteran Bryan Sperry.